Saturday, August 21, 2004

WOW

On drudge (which he is supposed to have only a 36 percent accuracy rate), he is reporting that Kerry is filing a legal complaint:

Kerry's campaign announced it had 'filed a legal complaint against Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT) before the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for violating the law with inaccurate ads that are illegally coordinated with the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign'... MORE...

Either he has something that is damming to Bush or he has nothing?
If he has something on Bush, he has won the campaign.

If he has nothing (I suspect that he does not), why is he doing this? Are the ads that bad? Are they that damming? Does he think that he will tie the ads up in legal limbo, so that they will not be shown? Will that work? If it is shown that he has nothing, will this back fire? Is the FEC a republican water boy?

Only time will tell...
Stay tuned for our next exciting episode.

cube

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here's a non-drudge (AFP wire) article on it:

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/102214/1/.html

Here's NY Times' critique of the SBVFT along with their 'web of connections' graphic:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/politics/campaign/20swift.html
http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/08/19/politics/campaign/20040820swift_graph.gif

And here is the other evidence that has *so far* been released to the public:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/8/20/18115/6359

[The Florida division of the Bush-Cheney campaign was distributing a flyer for a Swift Boat Veteran's for Truth rally in violation of current campaign finance laws.]

Even if the case does pass muster with the FEC (using further unreleased evidence or not) I wouldn't dramatize it too much. It certainly won't have won Kerry the campaign. Bush will hold plausible deniability, a few low-level staffers will be scapegoated, and the SBVFT ads will stop running. It'll be a stumbling block, but not enough to throw many solid points to a challenger before the debates or even the RNC.

Man of Issachar said...

"It'll be a stumbling block, but not enough to throw many solid points to a challenger before the debates or even the RNC."

It will only take 5 percentage points to either canadiate.

Kerry has lost some ground in the veteran area since the book /ads came out. Now he did not have strog support in that area, but if that silde expands to the greater popolace, the charges and how Kerry reacts to the charges could hurt him.

in this election 1 percentage point is damming at this point in my mind.